Summary: In the Gettysburg Address, Abraham Lincoln spoke of the need to conclude “the unfinished work which they who fought here so nobly advanced.” In his second Inaugural Address, he spoke in similar vein: “With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in.” It’s likely that, in Lincoln’s mind, the most immediate “unfinished work” was the Civil War itself as well as many other unfinished tasks. An
